A lot of the Facebook discussion I’ve seen on Gaza is overly simplistic. It leads to a conclusion I favor — Israel has to stand down — but taking a black-and-white view just makes dialogue impossible. My being for peace means that I’m also for peace-making, and peace-making demands an environment of mutual respect. Real mutual respect, in turn, requires understanding of people’s positions.

Explosion and smoke over Gaza from late last week. Photo snagged from Human Rights Watch website, http://www.hrw.org/news/2012/11/15/israelgaza-avoid-harm-civilians. The story is entitled “Israel/Gaza: Avoid Harm to Civilians” and subtitled “No Justification for Unlawful Attacks; Palestinian Groups Need to Halt Rocket Attacks on Civilians,” so you can be confident that it’s worth reading.

In 2012, there’s barely been a week when at least a handful of rockets haven’t been fired from Gaza into Israel. Every month or so there is an escalation, like during one six-day period in June when 162 rockets landed in Israel. “No government would tolerate a situation where nearly a fifth of its people live under a constant barrage of rockets and missile fire,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the foreign media on Thursday as he authorized more intensive strikes in Gaza.

Netanyahu is surely right. Israel’s response to these ongoing rocket attacks is justified. But being justified isn’t the same thing as being smart. The truth is Israel has been engaged in a low-grade war with the Hamas leadership in the Gaza Strip for five years now, with no plan besides a misguided military strategy for how to end it.

To try to contain the threat, Israel has relied largely on periodic air strikes on weapons storage facilities and targeted assassinations of militants, which sometimes result in civilian casualties that radicalize the Palestinian population. It bombs the smuggling tunnels that run underground between Egypt and the Gaza Strip and are used to smuggle in civilian goods and weapons. The tunnels exist because of the strict blockade Israel enforces around the territory, choking off anything like normal commerce.

In four years, Israel’s playbook hasn’t changed. Nor did the Palestinian rockets ever truly end. But in the intervening years the world has changed. Most significantly, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who could ignore anti-Israel sentiment in his country, is gone. His successor, Islamist President Mohammed Morsi, may have more sway with Hamas, but he also has less power to resist Egyptian calls to sever ties with Israel.

As with many conflicts (Northern Ireland comes to mind), extremists on both sides are often in a kind of cynical partnership, each hoping for atrocities that will polarize their supporters and strengthen their domestic political hand. The acts of Israeli extremists (including Netanyahu) strengthen those of Palestinian extremists in Hamas, and vice-versa.

What Israelis and their fervid American supporters have to realize is that their geopolitical situation is worsening. When you find yourself having to root against Arab Spring for your parochial reasons, you have a problem. Egypt, Turkey, Qatar, and others are on the rise — meaning that the Hamas strategy of playing to its global audience is more and more likely to work. Peace is still possible, but not through creating a desolation.

I’ve had conversations with Israeli Jews in the LA area who consider the notion of the U.S. curtailing — that means cutting back, not necessarily cutting off — its support for Israel to be impossible. I’ve told them that they are fooling themselves — in the long term, a strategy of depending upon another country to always put one’s own country’s interests first is a dead end. To the extent that such a strategy is successful, it depends on being seen as an unfailingly moral actor — and that is the impression of Israel that Hamas is, by plucking the right strings in the Israeli political leadership, undermining right now. Eventually, as it stands, it is going to work.

Supporters of Israel who feel that (1) the U.S. will never abandon them no matter what they do, and (2) that U.S. support alone is sufficient for Israel’s continued survival, feel no constraint when it comes to policy. (As the article notes, when people are shooting 1400 rockets across your border, you do have a legitimate right to self-defense — but that doesn’t make it wise.) Most people who don’t have a direct stake in the fight seem to perceive that what has to happen now is that Netanyahu has to be influenced to stand down — and I think that they’re right. How to do so while continuing to support Israel’s right to exist within secure borders? I’d love to here people’s thoughts on that.

The current Israeli leadership was stupid enough to join with single-issue voter/megadonor Sheldon Adelson and try to intervene on Romney’s behalf in the just completed election. I don’t know what has to happen in order to wise them up — or wise up the people who voted them in — but sooner or later I think it’s going to happen. Their strategy of making opposition to Israeli policy part and parcel with opposition to Israeli existence is, sure enough, a way to raise the stakes — but in so doing it takes Israeli existence much less seriously than it should. It gambles the existence of Israel on a bad bet regarding internal U.S. politics. It’s dumb, it’s vile — and, worse than either, in a sense, it’s unnecessary.

About Greg Diamond

Prolix worker's rights and government accountability attorney and General Counsel of CATER. His anti-corruption work in Anaheim infuriated the Building Trades and Teamsters in spring 2014, leading them to work with the Democratic Party of Orange County Chair and other co-conspirators (who had long detested the internal oversight his presence provided) to remove him from the position of DPOC North Vice Chair of in violation of party rules and any semblance of due process. He also runs for office sometimes.
Unless otherwise specifically stated, none of his writings prior to that lawless putsch ever spoke for the Democratic Party at the local, county, state, national, or galactic level. He tries to either suppress or openly acknowledge his partisan, issue, ideological, and "good government" biases in most of his writing here. If you have a question about any particular writing, just ask him about it and (unless you are an pseudonymous troll) he will probably answer you at painful length.
He lives in Beautiful Bountiful Brea, but while he may brag about it he generally doesn't blog about it. A family member works as a campaign treasurer for candidates including Wendy Gabriella in AD-73; he doesn't directly profit from that relatively small compensation and it doesn't affect his coverage. He does advise some campaigns informally and (except where noted) without compensation.

It should choose a path of negotiation, prepare its people to deal with those who want to provoke them into war, and work with other regional actors that are on more or less of a democratic path (including Turkey, Egypt, Libya, and Qatar) to figure out what steps on its part can best lead to a situation where support for sending rockets from Gaza will evaporate.

The path to peace has always been one where Israel can share its economic and technological gifts with its neighbors to the point where everyone simply has enough to lose by war that all sides rule it out. This will probably require a better Prime Minister than they are currently prepared to elect.

Hamas must first amend its charter declaration calling for the obliteration or dissolution of israel. Its kinda hard to negotiate with someone whose primary goal is simply to wipe you off the face of the planet.

*Settlements folks….settlements. The blog entry is quite right…..”extremists from both sides……keep creating issues to keep the conflict going..”

The israelis don’t want to give up the Settlements in Palestine…….when they left Gaza they cynically destroyed perfectly good housing developments so that the Palestinians that needed shelter couldn’t get it. Nasty and without merit….no matter how shabby the Palestinians had acted before that.

Both sides have political prisoners…..albeit the Israelis have thousands and the Palestinians have maybe two or three Israelis.

There in absolutely no reason to come to a peaceful resoultion for Israel…..they wouldn’t be able to use the “victim card” any longer. The have the control of the water in the Golan Heights and won’t share that with the Lebonese across the border.

The Israelis love to push their weight around….and we still want to know what cause
the Palestinians are using for their Rocket Attacks?

Who knows who is running the nut houses in that part of the world. Our in depth news teams here in America…..never report much other than the explosions and the hospital visits.

*Actually, that was Harry Truman…….a reknowned Habidasher from Kansas City, MO. He was put into office by the Pendergast Machine….one of the most corrupt since Boss Tweed in New York. He had a very unattractive daughter that played piano. He called Joseph Stalin…..”Good Old Joe!” He bombed two cities in Japan….just in case the Emperor thought it was just a lighting bolt from Zeus.

Harry took credit for saving ONE million GI lives……because we didn’t have to invade by force. History tells us that without this action……..the movie “Sayanara” with Red Buttons and Marlin Brando!

Israel‘s peace strategy, (to use a football term), is to ‘Run Out The Clock’; survive until the First Coming of the Jewish Messiah. (See chapters 12-14 of the Old Testament book of Zechariah).
For those that must disbelieve there’s Isaiah 17:1 “Behold, Damascus is taken away from being a city, and it shall be a ruinous heap.”
To make this a political comment, please remember that Obama, Romney, McCain, and most members of Congress support Regime Change in Syria. Regime change most likely will result in the Muslim Brotherhood running a more aggressive Syria wanting to ‘wipe Israel off the face of the earth’. Russia and Syria are allies. WW III ?
No, – this is not from LaRouche. He refers to himself as a ‘secular humanists’, (one who believes that there is no Devine Being, only unenlightened ‘god’ beliefs).

Harbingers of dome……are usually right 50% of the time. Damacus also was the place that created forged Damascus steel…..probably in the 9th or 10th century. Which created age of Chivalry. Who knows? The Tower of Babel was supposed to reside somewhere near there in Mesopetamia….or where-ever? The reality however is that people still are speaking different languages, still have their agendas and still haven’t seen anyone riding that white cloud down to visit the world. However, saying that – Perhaps Cloud Technology will eventually create a Messiah of Sort in a Virtually and Digital Sense in a third dimensional way like Ray Kurzweil is suggesting with the coming of the Singularity. Which is not without becoming a possibility. So, then all bets are off and who knows what might happen?

The good news is if we can make it passed 12-21-2012 wilthout the world turning off the lights forever……there is every good chance that all current prognostications…..may be put on hold for say third or four thousand millinium.

*We too suggest that this is not a Larouchism or schism…that we know of….
Jjust good solid investigative reporting……

*Larry Gilbert just got home today from the “Holyland” where these things have been going on. Very interesting. So, we suppose your waste of time was in writing : “What a monumental waste of blog space ………..”

While we did not go to the Gaza Strip we’ve just returned (this morning) from 12 days in Israel and Jordan and did not experience any of the hype from US media. Someone in our group said he heard one siren alert while we were in Jerusalem. The local print media does mention the firing of rockets from Gaza falling short of Jerusalem and the iDF’s swift response.